032: The Secret History - thoughts, notes, and quotes
the 1992 dark academia modern classic by Donna Tartt
Hi! It’s officially autumn and what better way to celebrate than to post about a classic autumnal novel?
After building it up so much in my head from other people’s reviews, my anticipation, countless book lists, and purchasing a copy back in 2022 - I finally read The Secret History. I have endless incoherent thoughts about it… so here we go.
NOTE: this post is too long for e-mail, so it will automatically appear in truncated form in your inbox, you will have to open and read on the Substack app or on your browser, thank you 🤍
Having first read and loved Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch when I read it in 2019, I don’t think there was any question of whether I would like The Secret History: the question is how much?
The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
The Secret History was first published in September 1992, most of the events occurring in fictional Hampden College in Hampden, Vermont. Although not officially confirmed by author, Donna Tartt, Hampden College is speculated to be inspired by Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont: a private and residential liberal arts college where the author is an alumni. In fact, Tartt dedicates the book in part to Bret Easton Ellis, a fellow Bennington College alumni and also fellow author (of American Psycho*, yes - that American Psycho).
And now, I hope we are all ready to leave the phenomenal world and enter into the sublime?
Tartt’s perfectly suspenseful - it gives that feeling of dread from the first page to the last - narrative is divided into three parts: a two-page Prologue, Book I, and Book II. The reader starts out both knowing too much and not enough, the Prologue revealing a major plot event, only culminating at the end of Book I into the first half of Book II.
I was riveted, fascinated, entertained as the events and the characters unfolded.
[…] objects such as corpses, painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art.
Chapter 1 introduces our narrator, and the rest of the main cast of characters. Richard Papen - a transplant from rural Plano, California - when admitted into Hampden College “fabricates a new and far more satisfying history” and somehow becomes the student of selective and somewhat reclusive Classics professor, Julian Morrow. He develops a deep fascination, an almost-obsession, with Julian and his students.
I envied them, and found them attractive; moreover this strange quality, far from being natural, gave every indication of having been intensely cultivated. […] Studied or not, I wanted to be like them. It was heady to think that these qualities were acquired ones and that, perhaps, this was the way I might learn them.
Julian’s students are equally reclusive. Henry Winter is enigmatic, cold and calculating, the assumed leader of the group. Francis Abernathy is both aloof and playful, but secretly insecure. The Macaulay twins, Charles and Camilla are the friendliest of the bunch, but not effusive in their affection. Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran is most outwardly friendly and cheery, but is also the most outwardly cruel.
Beauty is terror.
Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?
Now it made me sick, knowing there was no way out. I was stuck with them, with all of them, for good.
Book II is when the characters start to deal with the ramifications of what they’d done, in their psyche, but also in their outlook for the future: the characters journeying into a seemingly endless guilt trip.
I admire the calculated and manipulative narrative, puzzling and winding and yet still leading to inevitable ends.
The novel is deeply atmospheric, and the pacing relies on enigmatic prose that keeps the tension at a constant. For someone who doesn’t enjoy Tartt’s prose or the characters’ often lack of compunction, I somehow doubt the ending would provide much of a payoff.
Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things - naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror - are too terrible to really ever grasp at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself - quite to one’s surprise - in an entirely different world.
The whole experience is dreamlike in quality. Aptly so, the novel ends in a dream… the concluded tale “receding down the long gleaming hall.”
I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
Overall, I loved The Secret History in all its dark, questionable, academic, and irreverent glory. It’s a landmine of trigger warnings (both subtle and not) but it’s so intellectually satisfying. As disturbed and illogical as it may sound, I wanted Richard’s secret history to never end.
That’s a wrap, thank you for reading my notes and thoughts on this novel, I hope you enjoyed it. If you’ve read this before or are planning to read it, I would love to hear your thoughts!
shelf-envy
and since classic literature have some of the most collectible editions, I’ve scoured the web for editions I would love to own, if only I have unlimited shelf space!
since this a modern classic, there aren’t as many special editions out yet, although you’ll find a few custom editions and I’ve included one below.
here are a few shelf-worthy editions I’ve found of The Secret History:
Classically Challenged is a new section on The Eternal TBR, accessible on the home page in its own header. This is where I will be sharing notes, thoughts, quotes, and other things about classic literature!
*AMAZON ASSOCIATES LINKS
your turn…
have you read The Secret History and what did you think?
do you think Richard Papen is a reliable narrator?
how do you feel about how it ended? would you have chosen different endings for these characters?
have you read any other works by Donna Tartt?
can you recommend books similar to The Secret History?
I love The Secret History and no other dark academia book comes close to the pedestal I put it on. I'd have to reread to find specific passages, but I think there are several ones that point to Richard being an unreliable narrator. I immediately picked up on his romantic idolization of his peers. His foggy memory of what happened paired with the drug and alcohol use add to the paranoia and unsettling atmosphere in the novel. I haven't read The Goldfinch but I'd love to go back and read it. I read Ninth House and Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo earlier this year and they're really, really good but don't have the same layered nuances as TSH.
fun! I just posted a 'dark academia' post with this one and two others, ninth house and catherine house. very vibey!
https://therollingladder.substack.com/p/dark-academia